Where have all the PC golf games gone?

At one time I remember the PC was the main platform for golf games but, from memory, I can't think of anything noteworthy being released since TW08 and nothing actually good since Links 2003. In recent years PC gamers were thrown the bone of TW Online, a MMO golf sim that was mediocre at best, but now even that has been retired by EA as being too much hassle to maintain.

It seems that the PS3 gets an annual tiger woods update with "next gen" graphics but Electronic Arts can't be bothered bringing out a PC version these days and, besides, I find the whole TW series has gotten way too easy to appeal to the casual crowd.

I would love for Links 2013 to be released 10 years on from the last one keeping the feel and challenge in tact but with all the graphical bells and whistles modern graphics cards can bring to the table. Unfortunately, I fear it is probably never going to happen.

So what gives? Am I missing something or are golf games just dying out, especially on PC?

The golf experience is a little lacking, with multiplayer (where the developers want to go) not really working. However, it has so much promise with a course creator that I've gone crazy with, a great graphics so I'd just check the progress and see if the gameplay can go somewhere!

Seriously kick ass golf sim, not an arcade type game but a real sim style game. I'd recommend viewing some of the online tutorials as the game is quite difficult and the idiosyncrasies of putting and short game are intuitive.

It's online only but it is free. I wish I could get it for my PS3 but it seems they have no interest in developing it for gaming platforms.

Seriously kick ass golf sim, not an arcade type game but a real sim style game. I'd recommend viewing some of the online tutorials as the game is quite difficult and the idiosyncrasies of putting and short game are intuitive.

It's online only but it is free. I wish I could get it for my PS3 but it seems they have no interest in developing it for gaming platforms.

I tried WGT. Once you get done with the tutorial, how do you go about practicing..? It always asks where I wan to play.

It's "Free" to start. If you want to improve your clubs, balls, etc... you can buy additional goods. Just like some of the racing games out there- if you want to play and win against anyone, you can drop some serious coin on stuff that is basically non existent.

This is me too. The only series I've ever really felt was worthy of being called a golf simulation. Too bad that Microsoft seemed to have bought the franchise only to let it expire when they dropped their games division. It took the modding crowd several years to even talk MS out of access to the source code so that the community could take the game as far as the engine was capable of going. They did a great job with little in the way of resources, I was on the fringes of the team, doing beta testing and playing online with the lead mod developers to test some of the modifications they made (we used to play most Saturday nights during the winter, with guys from around the world). That was a good time.

This is me too. The only series I've ever really felt was worthy of being called a golf simulation. Too bad that Microsoft seemed to have bought the franchise only to let it expire when they dropped their games division. It took the modding crowd several years to even talk MS out of access to the source code so that the community could take the game as far as the engine was capable of going. They did a great job with little in the way of resources, I was on the fringes of the team, doing beta testing and playing online with the lead mod developers to test some of the modifications they made (we used to play most Saturday nights during the winter, with guys from around the world). That was a good time.

Letting Flight Simulator die is another MS fail.

Me too. I keep an old computer around that runs on vista just so I can play these.

This is me too. The only series I've ever really felt was worthy of being called a golf simulation. Too bad that Microsoft seemed to have bought the franchise only to let it expire when they dropped their games division. It took the modding crowd several years to even talk MS out of access to the source code so that the community could take the game as far as the engine was capable of going. They did a great job with little in the way of resources, I was on the fringes of the team, doing beta testing and playing online with the lead mod developers to test some of the modifications they made (we used to play most Saturday nights during the winter, with guys from around the world). That was a good time.

Letting Flight Simulator die is another MS fail.

Me too. I keep an old computer around that runs on vista just so I can play these.

My Links (mod v1.07) plays on Win 7 just fine. I do have to slow down the graphics card a bit to accommodate it. I have another old Win 95 game called Virtual Pool Hall that I also play on this machine, with the same issue of having to disable the Crossfire drivers that connect my 2 AMD video cards.

Funny- a few weeks ago, I came across my "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003" from EA. I figured maybe I'd give it a go, since I haven't played it in 8 years or something- or even SEEN it for that long. Installed right away, and loaded no problems. Now I'm back in my Career Mode, smiting all those pretenders...

But there is SOME level of awkwardness... Last week I played against Tiger as David Feherty on TPC Sawgrass...

Tiger couldn't hit an SUV with a putter from the inside... I beat him by 6 shots...

Oh, and somewhere in my collection of boxes here at the office, I have a copy of Links 2000 or something. Gotta go look. That had a good course designer in it. The EA course utilities is broken somehow...

It's still in early access (priced at £15 or $20) so it's understandably rough around the edges and a bit buggy but it's shaping up nicely and is far closer to Links 2003 than TW in terms of style, ie a golf simulator.

The team responsible are part of the Perfect Parallel company who provide much of the golf graphics seen on televised golf tournaments from the likes of Sky and so the visuals are pretty decent, although you'll need a proper gaming graphics card to play at the highest detail levels.

They are a small group of independent programmers, many of whom have worked on the modern Links 2003 mods projects and they are headed up by an actual PGA professional.

I would recommend it to anyone who liked Links 2003 back in the day.

I particularly like their motionswing mechanism (mouse) which uses the ratio between backswing speed and downswing speed (ie tempo) as the main factor in determining how accurately you hit your shot, rather than just how straight you pull the mouse back and through as is the case in every other game but is easily exploitable via a table edge for example.

It has about 6 courses available at the moment with online and local multiplayer options but weekly updates are adding more and more functionality and the finished game will have a career mode, customisable avatars etc. It takes a bit of getting used to and lots of practice, but I'm having a blast with it so far.